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Venice Film Festival Tries to Quit Sinking

By FRANK BRUNI

Published: September 7, 2002

VENICE, Sept. 5—
Some of the most heated chatter up and down the Lido this week was not about the movies in competition at the Venice Film Festival, even though they covered subjects as provocative as a bisexual painter and the sadism of Irish nuns.

It was not about the celebrities who showed up, even though they included La Loren and La Deneuve -- no first names required.

It was about the way that the arrival of these stars at the Palazzo del Cinema was being staged. While they once took leisurely strolls down the road to the Palazzo del Cinema from the nearby Excelsior Hotel, giving the festival a cozy feel all its own, this time around they were being dropped off by cars at the foot of a blazingly red carpet. That made Venice just like Cannes and more like Berlin. And it reflected the overarching, unofficial themes of the festival's 59th incarnation: relentless self-examination, aggressive overhaul and an emphatic quest for renewed glory at a time when competitors have stolen much of its luster.

Over the last few decades, Venice has gone from the grande dame of film festivals to the somewhat neglected spinster, and the first person to say so is Moritz de Hadeln, its new director.

In an introduction at the front of the thick, glossy program for the festival, which officially began on Aug. 29 and ends on Sunday, Mr. de Hadeln bluntly called it ''an old lady in urgent need of a lifting.''

In an interview at the Palazzo del Cinema on Tuesday afternoon, he explained: ''This is the oldest festival in the world. Venice invented the film festival.'' But he added: ''From time to time, you have to give people an electric shock. That's what I'm doing. I'm giving the truth.''

The truth, he said, is that for four years now the festivals in Cannes, Berlin and Toronto have largely eclipsed the Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica in Venice.

One of the principal reasons, say Mr. de Hadeln and some of the film industry executives here, is that Venice became so enamored of auteurs and smitten with obscure art films that it failed to adapt to one of the most important functions of film festivals today.

They are markets for studio buyers looking to take the temperature of, and snap up, movies that are small and idiosyncratic but -- the crucial part -- potentially profitable. Too often, Venice has given these buyers paltry pickings.

''Film is about art, and it's about talent -- it's everything you want,'' Mr. de Hadeln said. ''But it's also a business, and I don't think Venice has evolved enough.''

He gestured to a poster above his desk that included the festival title, and he noted the phrase ''d'Arte.'' The problem, he suggested, was right there, in bold letters.

One solution, apparently, is glamour, so this year's festival went in search of it.

Sophia Loren, who had not attended the event in decades, was lured back by screenings of ''Between Strangers,'' directed by Edoardo Ponti, her son. It stars Ms. Loren and Mira Sorvino as women taking stock of their decisions in life. The festival goers who took stock of the movie were unimpressed, to put it mildly. But Ms. Loren was bathed in applause, adulation and attention from the international press, and that seemed to be the point.

''Between Strangers'' was one of several movies that were being shown outside of competition, and that helped Venice attract some of the biggest names in the business. Harrison Ford dropped by, with Calista Flockhart in tow, to promote ''K-19: the Widowmaker,'' a submarine drama that was trying to launch itself in Europe after a poor commercial showing in the United States. Mr. Ford stars in it with Liam Neeson, who was also here.

John Malkovich came to beat the drums for ''Ripley's Game,'' a darkly comic thriller that catches up with the protagonist of ''The Talented Mr. Ripley'' many years later in his life.

Even within the competition, there were movies that festival organizers hoped would go on to attract widespread attention and thus validate Venice's relevance. The event opened, for example, with ''Frida,'' the director Julie Taymor's long-awaited biography of the artist Frida Kahlo. Salma Hayek plays the title character, who has sexual entanglements with both women and men.

The inclusion of ''Frida,'' a Miramax production, brought out that company's usual suspects, including the ubiquitous Gwyneth Paltrow, who was not featured in ''Frida'' or any of the other movies here. Some industry executives joked privately about what they saw as Ms. Paltrow's indiscriminate overexposure; one complained that ''She wasn't even dressed well.'' A looming mystery was whether the judges would feel compelled to award prizes to movies like ''Frida'' or whether they would stick, as they have in recent years, to the movies that simply got the best critical reception.

At the head of the latter class was ''The Magdalene Sisters,'' by the Scottish director Peter Mullan, which examines the abuse of troubled young women in Ireland who were sent decades ago to convents.

Mark Ordesky, the president of Fine Line Pictures, said that it had caught his eye, but that he would probably wait until it played at the Toronto festival to make a bid to acquire it for North American release. Mr. Ordesky explained that Venice increasingly served the function of tagging movies for further scrutiny.

''Most decision-level executives don't come here,'' he said as he sat one afternoon on the veranda of an oceanfront hotel. ''In 10 years of Fine Line's existence, we acquired one film here.''

Mr. de Hadeln sought to challenge this indifference with clever, something-for-everyone programming, wedding unsurprising elements, like a tribute to the career of the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, to edgier ones, like the debut of the controversial movie ''11'09''01 -- Sept. 11.''

The movie, which was not part of the competition, combines short segments from 11 directors of different nationalities, some of whom use their meditations on the terrorist attacks one year ago to take pointed issue with American foreign policy or global priorities.

But not everyone at or associated with the festival seemed convinced that it needed to change. Paolo Costa, the mayor of Venice, said that from the beginning: ''This was a festival for art. I would rather stick to this than become a market for the rest of the world.''

Mr. Malkovich said that part of what he appreciated about Venice was its ''low-key, more relaxed'' atmosphere.

''It's not as sort of media-charged as Cannes, but then, what is?'' Mr. Malkovich said with the deadpan delivery and sepulchral stare that distinguish his many cold-blooded characters, the protagonist of ''Ripley's Game'' most definitely among them.

But Mr. de Hadeln, for one, wanted more electricity, and he said the cars and the carpet were parts of that plan.